This morning while riding the subway to work I looked over the shoulder of a young man as he worked on a sketch in a pad. The drawing was of a beautiful woman. I looked around the subway to see if he was perhaps using someone on the train as a model, but nobody fit the bill. He was totally absorbed in his work– masterfully using a mechanical pencil and eraser to translate from his imagination to the page a stunningly beautiful and haunting figure. I must have watched him for fifteen minutes, and I was sad when I arrived at my stop and had to leave. It’s always a privilege to observe an artist at work.
As I exited the train I looked back to see the artist himself: overweight and homely, surrounded by throngs of disinterested straphangers, his plastic subway seat studio moving and bumping from Queens to Manhattan. None of this would keep him from his passion. I couldn’t help but feel a fellowship– amidst all the rejection, the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the very facts of the city in which we ply our wares, we go on spinning our songs.
And every now and then, somebody sees and is touched by our work.
